You can go back a hundred years to CABINET OF DR CALIGARI for proof that the horror genre has always flirted with the artistic. However, it seems to me that, in recent years, we're seeing more indie horror directors skirt the traditional narrative structures and offer up a slice of much more artistic horror. From LORDS OF SALEM to A FIELD IN ENGLAND and BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO, the horror aficionado is seeing a wave of movies that are almost an antithesis to big budget pablum like THE PURGE.
This love letter to the giallo genre may just push that limit a little too far, though, for most people's tastes. Let's be honest here. I'm a total horror geek. Amongst my "normal friends" I definitely have the strangest taste in cinema. I go to horror cons a few times a year and discuss horror films regularly online. Even in that horror community, my tastes run a little more avant garde than most. So, if this movie is a little too "artsy" for me, I'm not sure I know who the target audience is, though the fact that only 1100 have us have rated this probably speaks to that target audience not being very large.
This is a gorgeous, entrancing movie that can really only be taken in small doses. It takes some dedication and resolve to really sit down and plow through all 100 minutes of this European horror film. This is the work of absolute devotees of the giallo movement. These are film makers who have absorbed Fulci, Bava, Argento, Lenzi etc and squeezed those films down to their concentrated essence. One of the worst aspects of most of those movies was always a convoluted plot weighed down by stilted dialog, so the directors remove almost all dialog from this movie. There can't be more than a few dozen lines and if you want to say there's an "A to Z" narrative, I guess there is, but it's only to push along the imagery.
That imagery is what this movie is all about. It's like a checklist of archetypal images that every good giallo movie should contain. From the leather gloves to the continual shots of sharp knives puncturing and slashing flesh to the complete obsession with the color red and on down to the various shots of eyeballs through different holes. It's like these directors spent years studying the giallo and reducing it down to its' essential aspects, forgoing anything that wasn't necessary to creating a moving work of art.
I, also, love the giallo movement and have sat through many a black- gloved movie that most would have considered to be garbage, so I share this movie's affinity for that genre and the adoration that it's so clearly showing. It's more than a little tedious, though. This would have worked great as an hour long project seen in a dark theater in an art museum. The movie asks a lot of its' audience, though, to stick with it all the way to an ending that not's quite satisfactory and not essential in any way. You could watch any random 20 minutes of this movie and have the same appreciation for it because there's no real story to resolve and no narrative to see to a conclusion.
This love letter to the giallo genre may just push that limit a little too far, though, for most people's tastes. Let's be honest here. I'm a total horror geek. Amongst my "normal friends" I definitely have the strangest taste in cinema. I go to horror cons a few times a year and discuss horror films regularly online. Even in that horror community, my tastes run a little more avant garde than most. So, if this movie is a little too "artsy" for me, I'm not sure I know who the target audience is, though the fact that only 1100 have us have rated this probably speaks to that target audience not being very large.
This is a gorgeous, entrancing movie that can really only be taken in small doses. It takes some dedication and resolve to really sit down and plow through all 100 minutes of this European horror film. This is the work of absolute devotees of the giallo movement. These are film makers who have absorbed Fulci, Bava, Argento, Lenzi etc and squeezed those films down to their concentrated essence. One of the worst aspects of most of those movies was always a convoluted plot weighed down by stilted dialog, so the directors remove almost all dialog from this movie. There can't be more than a few dozen lines and if you want to say there's an "A to Z" narrative, I guess there is, but it's only to push along the imagery.
That imagery is what this movie is all about. It's like a checklist of archetypal images that every good giallo movie should contain. From the leather gloves to the continual shots of sharp knives puncturing and slashing flesh to the complete obsession with the color red and on down to the various shots of eyeballs through different holes. It's like these directors spent years studying the giallo and reducing it down to its' essential aspects, forgoing anything that wasn't necessary to creating a moving work of art.
I, also, love the giallo movement and have sat through many a black- gloved movie that most would have considered to be garbage, so I share this movie's affinity for that genre and the adoration that it's so clearly showing. It's more than a little tedious, though. This would have worked great as an hour long project seen in a dark theater in an art museum. The movie asks a lot of its' audience, though, to stick with it all the way to an ending that not's quite satisfactory and not essential in any way. You could watch any random 20 minutes of this movie and have the same appreciation for it because there's no real story to resolve and no narrative to see to a conclusion.